Fruit set

Fruit set, aged ~12 days?

About 10 days ago I noticed a few fruit had set on the tree. Exciting! But it's best to stay cautiously optimistic: avocado trees are known to set many, many fruit, and drop a good deal of them over the next few months, particularly as the weather warms up. I had counted as many as 8 fruit set at one point, but only a week later we are down to just 3 left.

If this tree were younger we would probably remove all the fruit. Since it's probably a year older than most nursery plants, we're going to leave these fruit on and see how they do. In all likelihood they will probably drop over summer; I don't know of any real scientific testing about the subject, but Internet wisdom says that an avocado tree won't keep a fruit until its base is 3-4 inches in diameter (ours is at most 2 inches). We'll just cross our fingers.

I will be installing a drip irrigation system soon, having thoroughly researched the subject. We have a small raised vegetable garden that is serviced by drip irrigation already. I will need to dig a trench to run the water supply line and digital control wires under the lawn, but once that is set the system will be completely automated. Currently I plan to put a single 2 GPH drip emitter on either side of the tree, and run the system every other day for 45-60 minutes. That will save J a lot of time and stress while I'm away for the summer.